


surely heaven wants for you

by cenotaphy



Series: season 15 fix-its [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Cas has light top vibes in this, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Coda, Dean Winchester Loves Castiel, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, Episode: s15e18 Despair - Castiel's Confession Scene, Episode: s15e20 Carry On, First Kiss, Heaven, Love Confessions, M/M, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Post-Finale, Season/Series 15, The Impala (Supernatural), do i hate that 15.20 exists? yes, references to s15e18, will i still write a fix it for it? yes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:09:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27679208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenotaphy/pseuds/cenotaphy
Summary: Cas doesn't come to him.Dean can't really argue with that, given the circumstances. In all the history of balls in courts, he thinks there might never have been a ball as thoroughly in a court as this one is in his.He drives for what feels like a long time but might just be a single sunny afternoon, or maybe years (time's funny here, Bobby had said), just enjoying the music, the shifting landscape outside his window, the hum and creak of the engine.Finally the forest opens up and the road narrows down in a way that he's fairly certain wouldn't typically happen on any kind of earthly interstate, and he glides the car to a halt at the edge of a lake.*Coda/fix-it for 15.20 "Carry On"
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: season 15 fix-its [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006809
Comments: 115
Kudos: 990





	surely heaven wants for you

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I hate acknowledging in any way that 15.20 happened.....i despise everything about it and thinking of it fills my body with a pure and incandescent rage....but since it VERY TECHNICALLY is a thing that occurred and exists and dwells in this godforsaken world to torment us, my brain DID cough up a fix-it/coda for it.

Cas doesn't come to him.

Dean can't really argue with that, given the circumstances. In all the history of balls in courts, he thinks there might never have been a ball as thoroughly in a court as this one is in his.

He drives for what feels like a long time but might just be a single sunny afternoon, or maybe years ( _time's funny here_ , Bobby had said), just enjoying the music, the shifting landscape outside his window, the hum and creak of the engine.

Finally the forest opens up and the road narrows down in a way that he's fairly certain wouldn't typically happen on any kind of earthly interstate, and he glides the car over gravel and then dirt and then to a halt at the edge of a lake.

There's a clearing here, big enough that it doesn't feel claustrophobic, but the treeline is still near enough and dense enough that it feels hidden. Private. When Dean gets out of the Impala and walks toward the water's edge, he can smell pines and the damp scent that wind always carries near water.

He hasn't let himself pray since the Empty took Cas. It had hurt too much to think about. And when Jack vanished into the cosmic unknown without snapping Cas back into existence—well, Dean understood that the Empty wasn't exactly within God's purview, and maybe what Chuck had managed so many times in the past just wasn't possible on this new chessboard. Dean can read the writing on a wall. He's always known there was no happy ending in the cards for him.

But—Dean's here now, isn't he? The deck has been dealt, the story is over, and he's still _here_. Maybe not _alive_ , but. If he couldn't be brave enough to chase the things he wanted while he was alive, maybe his own literal death is the kick in the ass the universe figured he needed.

Dean clears his throat, feeling a little awkward. He has the funny feeling that the person he's about to call is watching him from just around the metaphysical corner, waiting patiently for him to make up his goddamn mind.

"Cas," he says, out loud, to the waiting air, to the lake. To the forest around him and the faint peaks glimmering slate-blue in the distance.

There's a soft rustle, the breeze displaced by another body.

"Hello, Dean."

Dean turns around. Cas looks—different. It's the same coat, the same crooked tie, the same windswept hair and thousand-kilowatt gaze. But something's gone, and after a moment Dean realizes that it's the weariness. The heavy exhaustion that used to dog Cas like a shadow, that Dean had watched build up year by year, like a limestone deposit slowly calcifying Cas underneath the weight of a human-adjacent existence. A _Dean_ -adjacent existence.

But Cas doesn't look the way he first did when Dean met him, either—ramrod-stiff and ethereal, more storm than person. He's kept the tenderness, the softened edges. It's there on his face, in the relaxed brushstrokes of his posture. In the laugh lines still creased around his eyes.

Dean wonders if he, too, looks different to Cas. If the afterlife has smoothed out some kind of tiredness from him as well, left a clearing for something else to be built.

He's pretty sure that on the drive here he must have come up with a hundred different ways to start this conversation. He is also certain that he can't remember a single one of them now.

"Jack got you out?" he says to Cas, finally. An easy topic. Straightforward.

Cas nods. "He stormed the Empty." A half-smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, part awe and part disbelief. "Laid siege to it. It...didn't want to let me go."

Dean laughs. "And he said he was gonna be hands-off."

"He's stubborn," Cas admits, his voice brimming with affection.

"I'll say. He's our kid, alright." Too late, Dean realizes what he's said—he flushes a little, averts his eyes from the unreadable expression suddenly crossing Cas's face.

But all Cas says is, "He'll be good for the world. He's already done great good in Heaven."

"With your help, I heard."

Cas shrugs a little. "I'm...I'm trying."

Dean nods. There's a lump in his throat, and he doesn't really know why.

Cas shifts his weight awkwardly from foot to foot, then continues, "There's much to be done, still. But it's a worthy cause, and I do have much to atone f—"

"Why didn't you come back?" Dean blurts, and if he wasn't giving this whole self-esteem thing a shot, he'd hate himself for the way it comes out—plaintive and needy. A hairsbreadth short of accusing.

"I—" says Cas. He looks away, appearing to roll the words around in his mouth for a moment, as though choosing them carefully. "I was...apprehensive. After what I had said, I had found some measure of peace, something akin to closure, but I know I crossed a line, with you. I didn't think we could just—go back to the way things were."

"No," says Dean. Inexplicably, he has the bizarre urge to laugh, even though he also feels very much like crying. "No, we probably couldn't have."

Cas nods, almost to himself. He looks back at Dean. "I thought it would be easier, for both of us, to treat it as a chapter that was closed. I thought maybe—if I could devote myself to rebuilding Heaven, doing something good, then maybe eventually..."

"Eventually what?" says Dean.

"I don't know," Cas whispers. He knots his hands together in front of him, an unconscious gesture that looks so human it makes Dean's heart ache. "I don't know."

"You're a coward," Dean says. It isn't fair of him to say and he knows it, but he's suddenly angry—angry at Cas, and himself, and Chuck, and the whole shitty mess their lives had been, right up until the shitty end. "And so am I."

"Dean—"

"How could you not know how I felt about you?" says Dean, and it feels like freedom, to demand this. To sketch the shape of this in the afternoon air in front of him, even if he can't bring himself to pin it down yet. "You know everything about me, Cas. How could you not know _this_? How could you think that I didn't feel the same goddamn way about you?"

"I did know," says Cas. "But I also knew that it was something you were choosing not to act on."

And _that_ stings, because Cas is maybe right. Certainly, there's a whole lot of historical evidence—a fucking decade of it, really, if they're going to count—pointing that way.

Cas continues, with so much earnestness that Dean suddenly wants to throw something at him, "And I _understood_ that, Dean. I accepted it—"

"Well, why the hell did you? Why d'you always have to be so noble?" Dean demands. "Why couldn't you be selfish for once? Why didn't you just _try_ to—to—"

"To _what_?" says Cas bluntly, and there's suddenly something very close to fury blazing in his eyes. "To disregard what _you_ wanted? For my own selfishness? To impose _my_ desires, _my_ will, over yours—erase your agency like so many of the people in your life have done?"

"You don't know what I wanted," says Dean. His eyes burn. "I didn't even know _you_ wanted—that you _could_ feel this way, that it meant the same thing to you—and I _wanted you_ , Cas, _I always wanted you_ , we could've—we could've—and maybe it wouldn't have worked but we would have _tried_."

He's not even really speaking to Cas so much as to himself, to both of them. He feels a surge of grief so strong that it threatens to cut his knees out from under him. A thousand missed opportunities ribbon out from the life he left behind on earth, melting into the past like snow. All the ways in which he could have built a home with Cas, on earth, and never did.

"And now we'll never know," he finishes, the words fracturing on their way out of his throat, cracking in the empty air.

"No," says Cas, and the sorrow in his voice is so tangible that Dean feels like he's looking into a mirror. "I suppose we won't."

And then he just stands there. Cas just _stands_ there, calm and regretful and _accepting_ , and something snaps loose inside of Dean.

He crosses the space between them in two short strides. Catches Cas's face in his hands, tangles his fingers in Cas's hair. He doesn't pull Cas toward him—he leans in, closes the gap himself. Brings their mouths together with an urgency that wells up inside him so inexorably, he wonders how he ever held it in.

Dean's thought about kissing Cas before. He's thought about it a lot, actually. He's imagined it in slow and careful detail, half-ashamed by the wanting of it, even in the quiet of his own head.

The actual thing is not slow, and it's not careful. It's fire and heat and desperation, spilling out from his lungs in a rush of breath as he drags his teeth over Cas's lower lip, slots their mouths together, curls his fingers deeper into Cas's hair.

Cas reacts immediately, one hand twisting into the front of Dean's jacket as he kisses back, his tongue bumping Dean's as he opens his mouth into the kiss, his palm warm and insistent against Dean's jawline.

Dean pulls back, pants for breath as if he's a drowning person coming back to life. Clarity strikes him like a bolt of fucking lightning. "This is what you wanted," he realizes, out loud. He stares at Cas, at the planes and angles of his face, so achingly familiar and yet so new. "You wanted me to choose. You were waiting for me to choose."

There are blue sparks burning in Cas's eyes. A furious, delighted hunger in his gaze. "Yes," he says, and drags Dean back in.

Their teeth click together for a moment, a second kiss just as heated and unrelenting as the first, and then Cas is tipping his head to mouth at Dean's jaw, at his throat. Dean feels Cas's stubble grazing the side of his neck, and a coil of syrupy heat runs through his limbs like a slow electric current, desire pooling heavy and sweet inside him.

"Cas," he whispers, tipping his head up as Cas slowly kisses down toward his collarbone. The sky is cloudless and blue above them. "I want...I want..."

Cas fits his hands against Dean's hips. Digs his thumbs in a little, a touch that sends a spark through every cell of Dean's body. "What, Dean," he rumbles into the hollow of Dean's throat. "What do you want?"

"I—" Dean's voice cracks. Absurdly, he feels tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. "I—everything. I want—I want—" Cas eases his thigh between Dean's legs and Dean barely recognizes the breathy, punched-out noise that leaves his own mouth. "Everything, with you, Cas."

Cas exhales, a dark, satisfied sound. "Good," he breathes, and spins Dean around, walks him backward, away from the water's edge, until the warm metal of the Impala's hood bumps against the back of his knees.

"Why," Dean pants, "why are you—wearing _so many_ clothes—"

Cas laughs, low and warm in the base of his chest, and god, Dean thinks, if he could only take that sound and wrap it himself in it, wear it around his neck like a talisman.

Cas shrugs out of his coat and jacket, lets them drop to the ground. Dean swallows around the surge of want bubbling through his chest; he reaches out to Cas, fumbles at the front of Cas's white dress shirt, working buttons open with clumsy haste. He gets through about half of them before Cas loses his patience and yanks Dean's jacket off his shoulders, drags Dean's own shirt up until Dean has to acquiesce and raise his arms to get it over his head.

"Cas, I want to—" Dean says, and breaks off. He tugs on Cas's belt, gets the buckle undone, gets Cas's fly open. Eases down onto his knees, startled when there's none of the lingering ache of old injuries, just the supple motion of joints in perfect health.

And he'd be lying if he told himself he hasn't imagined this too—in his bed, in the dark, in dreams, in the privacy of the Bunker shower. He tilts his head up to look at Cas, who is staring down at him with a crackling mixture of reverence and desire.

Cas is hard already; when Dean wraps a hand around him, Cas shivers and clutches Dean's shoulder.

" _Oh_ ," he says. "Dean, yes—"

Dean leans forward, parts his lips, and—

" _Dean_ ," Cas says, the word coming out half-mangled. His hand clenches down on Dean's shoulder. He's hot and sleek in Dean's mouth and—god, Dean's imagination is good, but he doesn't think his dreams have ever done _this_ justice. He deepens the movement of his head, relaxes his jaw, puts his tongue to clever use. He knows his way around a blowjob, knows that he could probably take more, go faster, but if the sounds Cas is making are any indicator, he won't need to. And this—this is nice. Slow, easy, careful, Cas's hand tight on his shoulder, Cas making those beautiful, bitten-off noises above him. He spans his hands against Cas's hips, uses the grip to pull Cas toward him. He wants Cas to be closer—he wants all of Cas to be closer.

Cas rests his hand lightly on the back of Dean's head, not pulling or pushing, just running his fingers delicately through Dean's hair. His hips are trembling like he's trying to keep himself from thrusting into Dean's mouth. "Dean—" he pants again. And he still sounds so _hesitant_ , like he isn't sure he can have this from Dean. As if there could be anything, anything at all, that Dean wouldn't give to Cas.

Dean hums around the shaft and Cas makes a choked noise. He tightens his fingers in Dean's hair, his chin dropping down toward his hitching chest.

"Dean—" Cas stutters. "Dean, I'm going to—"

Dean pulls on Cas's hips again, drags him yet closer. He feels Cas's body go taut under his grip, an instant of frozen stillness, before Cas is jerking forward helplessly, gasping out Dean's name one final time as his hands flutter gently, desperately, against the sides of Dean's face.

Dean swallows, pulls carefully off with a slow, wet sound that goes straight to his own dick. Cas's face is slack with pleasure, his eyes wide and dark and wondering. He settles a hand against Dean's jaw, thumb tracing over Dean's bottom lip. Dean turns his head, licks the pad of Cas's thumb. Bites down gently on the knuckle, listens with satisfaction as Cas makes a low, hungry sound and slides his thumb fully into Dean's mouth, then his fingers, one at a time.

"Come—" Cas pants. "Come _here_."

Cas hauls Dean to his feet, and then Cas's fingers are out of Dean's mouth, and Cas's hand is on Dean's bare chest, pushing him back onto the hood of the Impala.

"You're beautiful," Cas mutters, leaning down over him, one hand braced on the hood beside Dean's head. His knee is back between Dean's thighs and Dean has to fight to lie still. "Dean...can I...may I..."

"Yeah," Dean agrees, not caring what he's agreeing to as long as it'll involve Cas's hands on more of his body. "Yeah, Cas, please—"

Cas skims his hand down over Dean's ribs, along his belly. His wet fingertips leave trails of fire under Dean's skin as they skate lower, as they dip below the waist of Dean's jeans.

Dean wraps his fingers around the back of Cas's neck and pulls Cas lower for another kiss. Cas nips gently at his bottom lip, sighs against Dean's mouth. Cas tastes like pine and honey; he smells like a cold night, like the air right before a storm. Dean thinks that he could do this forever, just lie here on the sun-warmed metal of his car and trace his hands over Cas's shoulders and chest and fit their mouths together like pieces of a puzzle—

—and then Dean is arching his back, gasping out a ragged breath that unspools from the base of his chest all the way out into the open air, because Cas has his jeans open, has his hand down Dean's boxers and curling around Dean's—

" _Cas_ ," he rasps, as Cas strokes him once, twice, again. He lifts his hips slightly so that Cas can tug his jeans further down with his free hand. "Cas—god, _Castiel_ —"

"I've got you," Cas murmurs against the corner of Dean's mouth, and Dean feels, again, that absurd hot prickle of tears for no reason. Cas palms over the head of his dick and Dean hears himself make a soft keening noise.

" _Fuck_ —yes, Cas—"

He wrenches Cas's half-open shirt down off his shoulders, drags his nails against the bare skin of Cas's back. Cas doesn't flinch, doesn't stop—just keeps up the heartrendingly steady pace of his hand while he murmurs gently into Dean's ear, a sweet susurration of words that slip in and out of languages Dean recognizes. There's lightning curling down his spine, pooling low in his belly, lifting him on an unbearable wave of coiled tension as Cas's clever fingers drag him closer to the edge.

"Cas," Dean manages once more, and then he comes, hips juddering up from the hood, his mouth open against Cas's jaw.

"Good," Cas hums, still braced above him, and he sounds a little wrecked, himself. "You—" He kisses Dean's temple, the corner of Dean's eye. "—so good, Dean."

Dean turns his face into Cas's neck, breathes out slowly. The syrupy heat settles in his limbs, a sleepy, yearning sweetness. He rocks into Cas's hand a little, shivering.

"Was that—" Cas starts.

"I love you," Dean says, into the warm hollow of Cas's clavicle.

Cas freezes, the breath sliding out of him in a long, shaky exhale. "I—" he says, and then he turns his head and kisses Dean again, fiercely, eagerly. "I love you too, you know I love you—"

"I know," says Dean, quietly. He presses his forehead against Cas's. Closes his eyes, inhales the nearness of Cas, the warmth of him. "I know."

*

They sit on the Impala's hood and watch the sun set across the lake, drowning everything in fuchsia and crimson. Dean clinks his beer against the one in Cas's hand. "So," he says. "There's still a lot of Heaven work to do, you said? Rebuilding stuff with Jack."

Cas smiles, his eyes crinkling a little at the corners. "Yes. But not right away. And not all the time."

"Sweet," says Dean. Eloquently, like the dumbass he is. He fidgets a little. "So you...so you'll..."

Cas waits, because he's patient, and probably also because he's a smug son of a bitch who knows exactly what Dean's trying to work up the courage to ask.

"You'll stay?" says Dean, feeling like a goddamn middle-schooler asking his crush out to the school dance. "With...with me?"

"I want to, if you'll have me," says Cas, and he's so _earnest_ , as he looks at Dean. The light burnishes the openness of his face, paints it a ruddy gold. "Do you want me to?"

Dean reaches over and takes Cas's hand. Tangles their fingers together. "I always want you to stay."

"Then I will."

Dean smiles. His heart judders a little, a lurching sensation that he identifies as happiness. "Good."

They sit for a little while in silence, as stars start to wink into view across the sky, faint in the indigo twilight. "This is a nice spot," says Dean. "Where are we, anyway? This still my heaven? I know they're all overlapping now."

"Actually," says Cas, and he might honestly be blushing, "it was mine."

"Was?"

"Well. I suppose it's ours, now."

Dean smiles wider, feels again that sweet, sharp sensation of his heart skipping a beat. Probably a good thing he's dead and doesn't have to worry about cardiac arrest, since his body is apparently going to keep betraying him like this. He twists around on the hood, surveying the darkening clearing—the fringe of pines, the quiet woods beyond. The flat stretch of clover-studded grass giving way to sand and the quiet lap of the water. It reminds him of Cas, in a way—a little windswept, a little lonesome, a little serene. He can imagine Cas standing in the clearing, watching the sun rotate over the sky, watching colors flicker over the lake. Before he can stop, he's imagining himself, too. Lying in the grass with his head pillowed on Cas's shoulder. Teaching Cas to skip stones over the calm water. Turning the pages of a book under the shade of the pines. Leaning over to press a kiss into Cas's hair.

Cas is watching him, his eyes full of the last dying light of the day. He's in just his dress shirt and slacks, the coat and jacket folded neatly to his other side. His hair is sticking out in every direction. God, Dean loves him. He tightens his hand around Cas's and lets himself peer, for just a moment, down the long timeless lens of eternity—gold afternoons and sleepy mornings, Cas's rough voice in his ear, the Impala's steady rumble, warm nights under these stars or any others. Their family and friends. Sam, one day. Cas working alongside Jack, turning Heaven from a prison to a paradise, making it into a home. Dean making a home, too, in a way.

"What are you thinking," Cas says softly. Dean hears it echoed out of the quiet halls of his memory. _What are you dreaming about?_

"I think," he says, and stops, because he's thinking about so _much_ , really, so many tiny sharp hopes, so many sweet staccato flashes of love and wanting, that it's almost overwhelming. But not in a bad way.

"I think..." he says again. He lifts Cas's hand to his mouth, presses a kiss to Cas's knuckles. Glances over at the clearing behind them, again. Picks the first thing off what he intends will be a very long list. "I think I want to build you a house, Cas."

Cas smiles. "I'd like that."

Dean grins into their clasped hands. "Then I will."

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be very short and sexy but then the angst made it longer!!! who could have seen that coming, not me!!
> 
> again, 15.20 has no rights in this household and if i had the time i would write a separate, specific coda individually retconning every single accursed scene of that 40 minutes of my life that i'll never get back...but here we are.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed, and thank you for reading <3


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